


That Good Night

by lesyeuxverts



Category: Exiles Saga and Galactic Milieu - Julian May
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-18 09:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8157674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesyeuxverts/pseuds/lesyeuxverts
Summary: He has mused, often, on justice in all its forms, balanced scales, ancient myths. He has, quite simply, done what he could to redress his own wrongs.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title and opening quote are, of course, from Dylan Thomas.

_ Wise men at their end know dark is right _

 

Unifex hangs alone in space, in darkness, in a curiously comforting solitude. 

 

Cherished memories are a cold fire, the aurora borealis on a new strange world, the slow sinking weight of dusk pressed on the horizon until it crumbles into night.

 

They have called him Abbadon, and Angel of the Abyss. 

 

He is no longer Atoning Unifex, but only Marc. He has made what reparations he could, he has drawn apart from the Unity. 

 

He has mused, often, on justice in all its forms, balanced scales, ancient myths. He has, quite simply, done what he could to redress his own wrongs.

 

He is alone.

 

He is alone,but then at the last, the Four are with him. They come with serenity and comfort, wrapping cool thoughts around the last of his tattered mental shields. 

 

_ You can't have thought that we didn't know. _

 

At the end, there is this, some measure of comfort, and Marc reaches for it, allows himself to reach out to them. He does not deserve this final consolation. He has spent all his years - long, uncounted years - he had known at the outset what it would take and he had decided to stand strong, to stay the course.

 

This is the end of it, and he does not deserve this.

 

_ You ridiculous man,  _ she said.  _ Can you possibly think we didn't know? _

 

There are the four he is leaving, and there are the two who have come to meet him - who have come, after all these years. She is diamond-bright and he is standing behind her but no less welcoming. 

 

_ Jack, jack-o, ti-jean I am there is a … _

 

Warmth, a final flutter of a heartbeat, the scent of pine, a single white rose enclosed in the palm of his hand. 

 

Transcendence is like the first dawn on a new world, the growing golden light and the dying embers of magma, the cooling of the core of the world and the warming of its surface. 

 

Like a kiss, like the bursting of a soap bubble, like the merging of one wave into the next, it happens. Marc is not alone. 


End file.
